Baby Did a Bad Bad Thing (8 page)

He would, thought Gemma grimly. What sort of fight could an Ally McBeal put up against even a man of even average strength? Gemma looked down at herself with a critical eye.

‘I can lend you a dark wig and a hairpiece,’ Shelly said. ‘And if you wear black, and dark stockings and heels you’ll look a lot thinner.’

Gemma made a face.

‘I’m not saying you’re fat,’ said Shelly with her rare smile. ‘It’s just that you haven’t really got that frail look. But if you want to give it a go we can meet at the safe house and I’ll lend you the right stuff.’

She dropped her cigarette over the balcony coping and Gemma stepped back inside with her.

‘I’d better shake a leg,’ said Shelly. ‘I’ve got a client in less than an hour.’

‘But you’re retired!’

‘I have. This is legit. I’m working as a sex surrogate.’

‘Shelly, be serious.’

‘I am, sweetie. It’s all legit. This guy could claim it on his health insurance if he had the right cover. He was referred to me by these two counsellors who do couples’ therapy,’ Shelly continued as they headed towards the lift. ‘It’s the truth,’ she said, noticing the look on Gemma’s face. ‘Cross my heart and hope to die. Two of us work for them. They trained us. Stop looking like that,’ she protested. ‘They brief us on what should and shouldn’t happen each session, depending on the client. As us girls know,’ she said after some reflection, ‘there’s a a lot more to sex than just sticking it in.’

They waited for the lift, watching the little red light slowly make its way towards their level.

‘The counsellors taught us these breathing techniques and we don’t have sex with the client until we’re instructed. It’s just work to me, but’—here Shelly raised her neat eyebrows—sweetie, this guy sure needed help. I suppose I always thought men were just lousy lovers when they bought it and didn’t have to bother. The first time we had sex I asked him what he did with his wife, to demonstrate to me. I just wanted to know, you know?’

‘And?’ Gemma asked.

Shelly shook her head. ‘Sweetie. It was woeful. Pitiful.’

The lift arrived and the doors opened. Shelly continued, quite unfazed by the other passengers.

‘His idea of good lovemaking was to stick it in, wiggle it around a bit, come in thirty seconds and dribble on my neck.’

They stepped into the lift and turned round to face the closing doors.

‘I said to him: Is that
it
? Is that how you make love to your wife?’

The silence in the lift was palpable.

‘After that,’ Shelly said, ‘I was very happy to follow the program the counsellors had given me, the breathing and the massage and such. He needed a lot of education, I can tell you. A lot of feedback. But do you know what he said? His wife never tells him anything. About sex, what she`likes, I mean. Not once. She just lies there in silence. Can you believe that?’

Gemma stared down a particularly shocked woman who’d deliberately engaged her eyes in a power struggle.

‘It’s good money,’ said Shelly, ‘and it’s nice to pass on what I’ve learned. I feel I’m actually doing something even more beneficial than my old trade. He’s only going to need a few more sessions.’

‘Shelly, you are an amazing woman. What does Kosta think of your professional work?’

Shelly shrugged. ‘He’s out of town just now. He never knows what I’m doing.’

Gemma became aware that a woman was quietly weeping into a tissue in one corner. Everyone pretended not to notice, including Gemma, and by the time they’d reached the foyer level, her focus was back to her line of inquiry. The lift doors opened.

‘What about the car used in the attack on Robyn?’ she asked, pulling out her notebook as they stepped out and walked over to where two chairs and a pot plant made a quiet corner in the large reception area.

‘Robyn’s friend took down the rego number and the police went and talked to the bloke. Reckons the car was stolen yesterday.’

‘He would,’ said Gemma. ‘Did you get his name?’

‘You bet I did,’ said Shelly grimly. ‘I’ve still got a friend or two in the cops. But he doesn’t match the descriptions from the other two attacks.’

Gemma knew that sex workers circulated their own information about ‘ugly mug’ customers who’d frightened or endangered them. Girls in the safe houses and the well-run legal parlours were reasonably safe, unless the man was a psychopath who didn’t care if he got caught red-handed. And that had certainly happened once or twice.

‘Maybe this attack is unrelated to the other two?’ Gemma suggested.

Shelly shook her head. ‘No. It’s him all right. The other two girls talked about that singing he does. No one knows about that except us.’

‘What does he sing?’ asked Gemma.

‘I don’t know.’

‘So what
is
the description?’ Gemma asked. They got up and started walking towards the foyer and the exit doors.

Shelly sighed. ‘Not very good. It could fit about half the male population. Average height, dark. A weird, whispery voice. Although that could be an act. Deep-set eyes. Strong, well built.’ She thought a moment. ‘I think it’s amazing that the girls remember anything about any of them. All the mugs look the same to me.’

‘Give me the car owner’s name,’ said Gemma, ‘and I’ll have a chat with him. Maybe watch him for a while.’ Shelly pulled out a business card with something scribbled on the back of it.

‘Peter Fenster,’ she said, passing the card to Gemma.

Outside the main doors, they were about to go their separate ways when Brenda ran out to them.

‘I remember you now,’ she said to Gemma. ‘I knew I’d seen you before. You used to be a copper.’

Gemma nodded.

‘You busted me,’ said Brenda. ‘For possession. About ten years ago. I got six months.’

Ten years ago, Gemma was thinking, Robyn would have been about ten or eleven then. She shook her head. ‘I don’t remember, Brenda. I busted a lot of people. It was my job. I hope there are no hard feelings,’ she said, wanting to go home.

‘You did me a favour,’ said Brenda. ‘I’ve been clean ever since. I do weights. I take care of myself.’ She started crying again, pulling out a handkerchief and wiping her eyes. ‘But I couldn’t help my little girl.’ She put the handkerchief back in her pocket. ‘If you’re going to go after the animal that did that to my Robyn, you’re my hero.’ She pushed her hair away from her face and Gemma could see that she was a good-looking woman under the exhaustion and distress. ‘I’d do anything,’ Brenda was saying, ‘to help you. Anything to get that mongrel.’

‘Thanks,’ said Gemma.

‘I mean that,’ said Brenda.

First thing next morning, Gemma stood on the balcony of Minkie Montreau’s waterfront house at Vaucluse
looking across at the Harbour Bridge. She followed the movement of a small ferry riding the slight chop of the water. Even with the grey wash of the rain over the skyline and mist veiling the tops of the tallest buildings it was still a breathtaking panorama of the most beautiful harbour in the world. Gemma shivered, remembering another night two years ago in an apartment not far from here when the harbour had been dark with rain and she’d thought she was going to die. She stepped back inside the splendid room, reassured that there was nothing sinister here. Rich fabrics at the windows and a carpet thick as a fleece created cosy opulence in the overcast light, and Minkie Montreau, an elegant woman in her late forties, Gemma guessed, hovered near an oversized damask sofa, finally settling on its edge like a nervous moth on a magnolia. Around her neck was a string of huge South Sea pearls, so pure, so luminous that they seemed to cast light and the woman bloomed with nervous energy, her neck and face lit up with pearl light. Gemma wondered if she was wearing her famous floral satin underwear beneath the classic black trouser suit.

‘The insurance company is saying it was arson,’ Minkie Montreau said, a crooked grimace twisting her brilliant red lipstick. ‘And I was shocked to hear the police have been informed.’

‘That’s quite usual,’ said Gemma. ‘Standard procedure with suspicious fires, Mrs Montreau.’

‘Miss, actually.’ Minkie Montreau lowered her head and studied a huge ruby on her left hand.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Gemma. ‘I thought you said your husband—’

‘I kept my maiden name, long before it became the usual thing to do. I was a successful professional woman for many years before I married.’

‘Yes,’ said Gemma. ‘I remember.’

Minkie Montreau lifted her head, although the fingers of her right hand still fiddled with the ruby ring. ‘So, I now find myself the subject of a police investigation.’ She stood up, unable to contain her distress, hands flashing diamonds and rubies as she moved around the room, touching things blindly as she passed them, as if to reassure herself that what was happening was real, and not some nightmare. She walked to the apple-green silk-covered wall between the french windows and leaned against it as if she needed a support. ‘And I’m getting the distinct impression that I’m their prime suspect.’

You would be, Gemma thought. The closest person to the victim usually has the strongest motive. Add in whatever sort of money goes with this lifestyle and the motive for murder becomes even stronger. Gemma’s eyes took in a Picasso hanging next to a Chagall in which a garlanded blue donkey floated in a purple sky near a pair of drifting lovers. Then she noticed a framed portrait of a man in his sixties, whose eastern European features were partly hidden by a single red rose in a crystal vase, standing on a table next to a porphyry cigarette case. She recalled the ‘Fatal fire’ note and Spinner’s added question mark.

‘That’s why I need you,’ Minkie Montreau said. ‘I adored Benjamin.’ She turned to look at the portrait. ‘You don’t know what it’s costing me, talking business like this with him dead.’

Of course, this is Benjamin Glass’s wife, Gemma realised as Minkie spoke. Bad sign, lady, using the past tense and already wearing widow’s weeds.

Minkie was still standing against the wall, eyes half-closed, as if awaiting the action of a firing squad. Gemma leaned back in her seat, looking straight into her client’s eyes.

‘How do you know your husband is dead?’ she asked, remembering the ambiguous police report on television. ‘He’s listed only as missing.’

Minkie Montreau pushed herself away from the wall, frowning. ‘Of course he’s dead,’ she snapped. ‘He’s been completely’—she searched for the right word—“
vaporised
”.

Gemma was astonished at the woman’s sudden display of ire.

‘The fire at the house was extraordinary. You can’t imagine what it was like. Someone up there took some video footage.’

She collapsed back onto the white damask, hunched over her knees, her body shaking. Gemma waited, not untouched by this visible distress, but knowing that her business was to stay separate from it. Human beings don’t vaporise in fires, Gemma was thinking. Even in the crematorium ovens at well over 1000 degrees Celsius natural teeth are not destroyed and certain dense bone fragments have to be pulverised before they can be fitted into the polystyrene boxes with the chrome plate on the lid and handed back to the relatives.

‘That’s why you must help me,’ said Minkie Montreau, now blowing her nose and wiping copper-shadowed eyes that Gemma could see were alive with intelligence.

‘Miss Montreau—’ she started to say.

‘Please. Call me Minkie.’

Gemma nodded. She took a breath. ‘The first thing to remember, Minkie, is not to take this investigation personally. It’s completely normal procedure whenever arson is suspected. Any suspicious fire may become a criminal matter. Both the fire brigade and the police have teams that will examine this issue. No one’s pointing a finger at you.’

‘
Yet
,’ concluded Minkie, rummaging for a cigarette. She found one, and then searched around for a light, finally picking up a huge gold cylinder from a cedar side table. ‘God knows how long Benjamin’s had these,’ she said grimacing as she inhaled. ‘I haven’t smoked in ages.’

‘Tell me,’ said Gemma, ‘when did you last see Benjamin?’

Gemma watched the woman’s face closely at this mention of her missing husband, but could see only disgust as she squashed out the long stub immediately.

‘In the morning,’ she said. ‘He went to work yesterday just as usual. Then he drove to Nelson Bay in the late afternoon. That’s where we have our holiday house. I was intending to join him on the weekend.’

‘And—’ Gemma started to say.

‘And he was his usual self, if that’s what you’re about to ask me. We had breakfast in my sitting room as we always do. I saw him off. He was wearing his new winter coat.’ Her lips compressed as if she were trying not to cry. ‘There was a tiny thread near the collar. I picked it off for him when I kissed him goodbye.’

It was very convincing, Gemma thought. That little wifely detail of the thread. The projected scene of domestic contentment was perfect. But was it the truth? Gemma was about to ask another question when Minkie Montreau answered it herself.

‘I’ve called you in because I want you to do a parallel investigation—on my behalf. I don’t want to be left in the position of passively waiting for the police to tell me what’s going on. I need someone who’s completely disinterested.’ She raised her coppery eyelids to Gemma. ‘I must know exactly what happened,’ she said. ‘How that fire started. What caused it. What happened to Benjamin and why.’

Gemma clearly saw that here was a woman who was used to power and very uncomfortable with delegating or indeed trusting any agent other than herself. How, she wondered, did such a woman give up a lucrative career and become someone’s nice little wifey?

‘I’d do it myself,’ Minkie continued, ‘but I simply don’t have the expertise. Or the contacts.’ She flashed a glance at Gemma who saw again her sharp intelligence at work. ‘How will you conduct this?’ she asked.

‘I’ll talk to the relevant people,’ said Gemma, impressed by the woman’s question. ‘I’ll go over the witness statements, re-interview anyone who might have seen or heard anything. People sometimes remember details after they’ve completed their witness statement. I’ll have a look at the fire site. I’ll find out all I can about the fire itself. I’ll do everything the police or the fire investigation people might do.’ And then some, she thought to herself. ‘Firstly, tell me what you told the police,’ Gemma asked, ‘regarding your movements on the day of the fire.’

Minkie looked away for a second, fingers clasping the huge pearls. ‘I didn’t do much that day,’ she said. ‘Benjamin left about 8.30. I pottered around here the rest of the morning. In the afternoon I went shopping and then’—Gemma was alerted by the pause and waited in silence until the woman continued—‘and after that I came home. It was later that night when the police came round and told me about the fire. She shrugged. ‘It was awful.’

Gemma wondered at what might have been omitted from the narrative. The best way to lie, she knew, was to tell the truth—just not all of it.

‘And that’s all you did that day?’ she asked, giving Minkie a chance to add anything, knowing from her experience as an interrogator that anything originally left out, then later admitted, is often extremely sensitive.

Minkie Montreau paused for a second, then nodded, reaching under a tapestry cushion for a crocodile-skin bag. She pulled out a wallet and began counting five hundred dollar notes. ‘Will this be sufficient to get things started?’ she asked. ‘Of course, I’ll want a full inventory of every expense and time spent.’

‘And you shall have it,’ said Gemma, taking out a card, writing her rates on the back and handing it over. ‘Now I’ll need to ask you a few more things.’ She knew she wouldn’t have to use her Sunday School language here. She came right out with it. ‘Minkie,’ she said, ‘did you have anything to do with your husband’s disappearance?’

There was a fraction of a second’s pause before Minkie shook her head. ‘I did not,’ she said emphatically. ‘I’m not going to pretend to you that marriage to Benjamin Glass was always a garden party. But I owed him a lot. In many ways he was my best friend.’ Again, Gemma noted her use of the past tense.

‘Did you have an insurance policy on the house?’

Minkie shrugged. ‘I’m not even sure of the amount,’ she said. ‘But yes, and it would be large—several million. And yes,’ she said, shooting a glance at Gemma, ‘I would stand to collect it all. He has no other living relatives. There were two maiden sisters, much older than him, but they died years ago. And yes, it would be helpful to me.’

‘I’d like the name of the insurance company, please,’ Gemma asked.

‘It’s with Australasian Magister.’

‘Do you have a copy of the policy?’

Minkie shook her head. ‘There’s probably one somewhere with Benjamin’s things. At the office. In his study. I don’t know.’

‘So you haven’t seen it recently?’

‘No.’

‘This may sound like something out of a gangster movie,’ said Gemma, ‘but if you know of anyone who might want to hurt your husband, this is the time to tell me. Strictly in confidence. Is there anyone you can think of?’

Minkie Montreau considered. Gemma watched a range of emotions move across her features.

‘Gemma,’ she finally said, ‘Benjamin was a big man. I mean that in many ways. He was imaginative and generous. But it stands to reason that a man of his stature and influence will have offended other people. Little people are always offended by big ones. It’s the world we live in.’ She took a deep breath. ‘He was widely known as an entrepreneur and a philanthropist and he favoured a couple of charitable organisations.’ She paused. ‘But I don’t personally know of anyone who would wish him ill.’

Gemma was alerted by the words Minkie had used. ‘You say,’ she said, ‘you don’t
personally
know of anyone who would wish him harm, but maybe you’ve heard something? A rumour perhaps? A suspicion?’

Minkie went to the french windows and watched as a couple of tug boats shoved a container ship under the Harbour Bridge. Then she turned back to Gemma and shook her head. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I can’t bring anything to mind.’ She turned her attention back to the rain-swept harbour.

‘If I’m going to do my job properly,’ Gemma said to Minkie’s back, ‘I’m going to have to go everywhere, speak to everyone. If you’ve got any secrets now, you might as well tell me. Because it’ll all come out one way or another. Either to the police, or the insurance people or me. Better it’s me and we can discuss damage control. If necessary.’

Minkie turned away from the french windows, walked back over to the table and opened the cigarette case. She upturned its contents into the dainty Japanese-style wastepaper basket near the grand fireplace and then closed the lid with a snap.

‘I myself have no secrets,’ she said, putting the glassy box back on the table. ‘I live a quiet life, I have a couple of women friends, I go out to the theatre, galleries, lunch, things like that. I make the occasional foray into the antique buying world. I used to make time for Benjamin. That’s it.’

‘Are you sure?’ Gemma asked, hovering over her note pad.
‘
I
myself
have no secrets,’ she’d said, implying that she knew someone else who did, thought Gemma, making a note of it.

More hesitation. Minkie Montreau shrugged. ‘Yes,’ she repeated. ‘That’s it.’

‘What is your financial position?’ Gemma asked.

‘Fine, thank you.’ Was her response, Gemma wondered, just a little too fast?

‘Just two last questions,’ she said, closing her note book and standing.

‘First, was there an outstanding loan on the property?’

Minkie shook her head. ‘No,’ she said. ‘It was fully paid for. Why?’

Gemma pressed on with the next query. ‘Did your husband have a pet on the premises on the night of the fire?’

The woman’s face hardened. ‘Why on earth do you want to know that?’ she said.

Gemma gave a half-smile, shaking her head as if her question was merely a whim. ‘Did he?’ she repeated.

‘Well .
 
.
 
. yes, now that you mention it,’ Minkie said with reluctance. ‘He had a cat. I can’t bear them.’ She wrinkled her nose as if smelling something unpleasant. ‘A dreadful black and white thing. Benjamin was very fond of it. It lived at the factory. But he’d take it up to the Bay if he was going to be there for a few days.’

Gemma nodded and reopened her notebook, noting it down.

‘So where is the cat now?’ Gemma asked.

Minkie Montreau’s shadowed eyes widened. ‘I have no idea,’ she said. ‘It’s not a matter I take an interest in.’

‘Do you have a photograph of it?’

‘Why all this interest in a damn cat?’

‘
Do
you have a photograph?’